It won’t be long until Clayton Kershaw is back toeing the rubber at Dodger Stadium.
The future first ballot Hall of Famer made his first rehab start Wednesday morning in Oklahoma City. Kershaw pitched well all things considered, going three innings and allowing two hits and zero runs. He threw 22 of his 30 pitches for strikes.
After the game, Kershaw was asked how he felt. Over the last couple of years, Kershaw has dealt with shoulder and toe issues.
“I think anytime with rehab you want to feel healthy, which I do feel good today. Then you want to see your stuff — obviously — play. There’s some things that I need to work on still, but for the first [rehab appearance] overall, it was a good step forward,” Kershaw said.
Kershaw averaged 87.5 mph on his fastball. While we won’t see the Kershaw of yesteryear when he was sitting in the mid-to-high 90s, he should be able to approach 90 mph with a larger workload moving forward. In fact, the hardest pitch on average he threw was actually a sinker.
Always tinkering and experimenting to get better, it wouldn’t be shocking for Kershaw to have learned a thing or two about a splitter from his Japanese teammates Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki. It’s not traditionally a pitch he throws — though as his velocity has somewhat diminished, Kershaw relies more on movement and mixing up his assortment of pitches.
When asked about Kershaw’s natural progression back to the big leagues, manager Dave Robert offered the following:
“I know he’s probably happy with the uptick in velocity. The toe is the last part of it,” Kershaw said. “The body feels good. The arm feels good. And so just getting that left toe, the drive, drive foot, is the last piece. But talking to the training staff, they said he felt pretty good.”
